This coming Saturday, March 8th, we will march together in Brussels with
‘Karzar’ an Iranian women’s coalition. We want to shout out our rage
against the horrendous situation of women in Iran and against the
enormous repression that women’s organisations are facing there. It is a
show of solidarity and support to the hundreds of women activists who
have been jailed and murdered for their ideas. But we want to shout loud
as well our protest against imperialism: no western intervention has
ever improved the lives of women and children, quite the contrary.

No to US-imperialism!

The demonstration will be starting at the US embassy, where women from
Iraq and Afghanistan will speak out against imperialist intervention. In
Afghanistan, women’s position under the Taliban was used heavily in the
war propaganda of the US and of their European allies. Images of
burka-free women in Kabul were used to show how the western forces play
a “liberating” role.

But this is just propaganda; in reality life has not improved for Afghan
women. The acceptance of sharia law, without any safeguards for women,
by the western forces allied in Nato, shows women’s liberation was never
one of their goals. On top of being held down by their own elite on the
basis of religious and local reactionary traditions, women in
Afghanistan suffer from the devastation the war has brought. The few
resources that are being put in are used to bolster an elite, with
massive corruption being evident on all levels, and for military
operations, leaving most of the country the choice between the drug
lords or the Taliban forces – a choice between the plague and cholera.

In Iraq the same story can be seen. Massive funds are being put into a
war that goes on to devastate people’s lives. By now the number of
victims in the Iraq population must have risen to over a million, taking
into account also the deaths that have occurred because of the destroyed
infrastructure. Whereas the oil is being well protected, the masses of
the population face growing chaos and violence, hunger, lack of
necessary services. In Iraq as well, the US-protectors have accepted
sharia law and all it brings with it for women.

Some examples of what life brings to women in these US-“liberated”
regions:

“Doa”, a young Kurdish woman, was brutally battered, trampled on and
stoned to death by her tribe. She became the code name for hundreds of
Kurdish women who were cruelly murdered to preserve the men’s “honour”
under the protection of the American-based Kurdish government in Iraq.

Afghan women were repeatedly raped in “Pol charkha” prison by the
police trained by the so-called ‘Peace Keeping Forces’.

No to the anti-social European Union project!

The demonstration in Brussels will then pass by the EU parliament
building. There, trade-unionists will explain how the EU-project has
attacked workers’ conditions, wages and social security, and how that
has affected women.

In Belgium, as in many EU countries, the neo-liberal policy of the
nineties was justified by arguments about the necessity of reaching the
Maastricht-norms, with emphasis on driving down the state deficit. It
was used to justify a witch-hunt against the unemployed, hitting women
extremely hard. In the nineties almost 200,000 people saw their benefits
suspended as long-term unemployed people who lived with someone who has
an income no longer had the right to benefits. 92% of those losing their
benefits were women. Before that, part-time unemployment benefits given
to part-time workers to allow them a real income were already mostly
abolished.

Such measures have had an effect on women. Although more women than ever
go out to work, this does not mean they have gained financial
independence. Part time work has grown substantially in the last 10 to
20 years and it is mostly women who are involved. In all EU countries, a
witch hunt on the unemployed has been accompanied by the establishment
of special job schemes, creating new kinds of “jobs” - all of them
paying extremely low wages and giving out short term contracts.

Low benefits and a growing number of jobs that do not offer you a salary
high enough to live on mean for instance that one in three single
mothers is officially poor. The pension reform of the nineties (bringing
the number of “career years” women need to get for a full pension to the
same level as men: from 35 to 40 years) is in the meantime creating a
growing number of poor female pensioners.

The neo-liberal policy of privatisation and liberalisation has also run
down public services to a great extent, leaving the family - and most of
all the women in the family - to cope with the extra work. Hospitals
send people home as soon as possible. There are big shortages in all
major care sectors, be it in care for disabled people, with thousands
being on waiting lists to get the specialised care they need, or in
child care and care for the elderly, which is often far too expensive.

Far from setting an example, the European Union, with this undermining
of workers’ conditions and income, with this destruction of social
security systems and public services, is turning back the clock for a
lot of women. It leaves many of them with the choice of dependence on a
male wage earner or poverty. Women being over-represented in low income
groups, they are hit extremely hard now that food prices are going up
rapidly, following high increases of housing and energy prices in recent
years.

For an end to the horrendous position of women in Iran!

The demonstration stops for the last time in front of the Iranian
embassy. We want to show the Iranian regime that our opposition against
imperialism does not in any way mean we will accept the horrible
situation of women in Iran, who are suffering under barbaric oppression
and whose lack of rights is inscribed in law. Anti-imperialist struggle
and the fight for women’s rights have to go hand in hand.

The situation of women in Iran is intolerable. Just some examples:

In Tabriz, a woman was barbarically left suspended on a loosely
fastened rope from a gallows and torturously struggled until she died.
Afterwards, the Islamic regime exhibited her body at a prominent place
so that other women could learn a lesson and not challenge the Islamic
regime.

The Islamic patrol guards arrested Zahra, a young Iranian woman, raped
and murdered her. Her fate is added to the thousands of women who have
been raped in the Islamic regime’s prisons in the last 28 years.

Thousands of women in Iran have been beaten and arrested for not
following the proper Islamic code of dressing.

Struggle against the regime is always answered by a stepping up of
repression. Women activists get arrested and sent to prison on
fictitious “unlawful conduct” charges. In spite of such atrocities,
considered “normal” in the present Iranian society, women continue their
struggles and reach out to the rest of the world for support.

Why this campaign?

Karzar is a women’s coalition of Iranian left wing organisations, which
fights for the abolition of all barbaric and unequal laws against women,
including stoning, forced veiling, gender apartheid. It fights to secure
the right of women to divorce, their right to keep children after
divorce, for total control over their bodies, the right to choose their
partners - as heterosexuals or as lesbians. Karzar also aims to
eliminate any religious control over, or interference in, any aspect of
women’s lives. The alliance has organised International Women’s Day
activities in Europe - Germany and the Netherlands - in recent years and
they have asked the help of LSP/MAS to organise it this year in Brussels.

We see this as an excellent opportunity to show support to the women’s
movement in Iran, as well as a chance to get to know the oppositional
movements in that country. There is a danger that many of the European
left, in the fight against US imperialism and with the threat of a US
intervention in Iran in the background, will “forget” the necessity of
fighting this brutal regime, which is extremely repressive against every
form of opposition. We would, as would Karzar, fight a US intervention
and mobilise against it, as we mobilised against the intervention in
Iraq. But not to support the present Iranian regime, but in support of
the masses of the Iranian population, who are victims of this regime and
who would be victims again under a US-intervention, as the example of
Iraq shows.

Internationalist working class traditions

In this way we want to honour the internationalist and working class
traditions of International Women’s Day. The bourgeoisification of the
old workers’ parties all over the world has also meant there are no more
big demonstrations on the 8th of March. Instead, International Women’s
Day has become a day in which most of the world sheds a tear about
women’s poverty and hardship, rather than fight. Studies will show how
women are hard hit by wars, by economic and social degradation all over
the world, by physical and sexual violence. They will show the many
forms that women’s oppression takes. But they will show no way out, the
only result being new promises that will not be kept.

The way out for the overwhelming majority of women, as for all workers,
is in the rebuilding of strong workers’ parties which can reclaim this
internationalist tradition and give it new life. These parties are
necessary for the working class to unite its forces and work out its
strategies.

LSP/MAS, like other sections of the CWI, is making every effort to help
forward that development. In new parties and formations we advocate the
idea that the working class should defend and assemble all oppressed and
exploited layers, fighting against the capitalists’ divisions and for
working class unity. Our motto is: ‘No women’s liberation without
socialism, no socialism without women’s liberation’.